To turn the wound against all scars.

August 2009

You are all wrong. Rapunzel never lived in a tower. The tower lived in her. She came from the sea. Only people from the sea can have abnormal amounts of hair because in water, everything becomes weightless; there is only the drag and pull of your own being. Rapunzel was a pure, ethereal spirit tainted by human life on land. In the depths of the seas, she would meditate amidst subterranean plants and dream underwater dreams, dreams unknown to creatures on land. The longer the hair, the greater the net to catch these dreams.

The window through which that hapless man from land climbed was her eye; she thought he saw her in her true self, but he saw her, saw right through her into the beyond. It was her otherworldliness that captivated him. The twilight flowers he saw in her head. He must have their nectar, its scent potent and beguiling.

The moment his foot crossed the ledge she lay there, dying, footprints bloodying her heart. He wrenched the flowers out with no hesitation, no thought, as if they were common flowers that grew between and along pavements.

He looked right through her and there she lay dying, the dreams having vanished.